Download or read book Houdini Tarzan and the Perfect Man written by John F. Kasson and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2001 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Concern with the white male body - with exhibiting it and with the perils to it - suffused American culture in the years before World War I, he suggests, and continues with us today."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Houdini Tarzan and the Perfect Man written by John F. Kasson and published by Hill and Wang. This book was released on 2002-07-02 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A remarkable new work from one of our premier historians In his exciting new book, John F. Kasson examines the signs of crisis in American life a century ago, signs that new forces of modernity were affecting men's sense of who and what they really were. When the Prussian-born Eugene Sandow, an international vaudeville star and bodybuilder, toured the United States in the 1890s, Florenz Ziegfeld cannily presented him as the "Perfect Man," representing both an ancient ideal of manhood and a modern commodity extolling self-development and self-fulfillment. Then, when Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan swung down a vine into the public eye in 1912, the fantasy of a perfect white Anglo-Saxon male was taken further, escaping the confines of civilization but reasserting its values, beating his chest and bellowing his triumph to the world. With Harry Houdini, the dream of escape was literally embodied in spectacular performances in which he triumphed over every kind of threat to masculine integrity -- bondage, imprisonment, insanity, and death. Kasson's liberally illustrated and persuasively argued study analyzes the themes linking these figures and places them in their rich historical and cultural context. Concern with the white male body -- with exhibiting it and with the perils to it --reached a climax in World War I, he suggests, and continues with us today.
Download or read book Houdini Tarzan and the Perfect Man written by John F. Kasson and published by . This book was released on 2005-04 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An important new work from one of our premier cultural historians. "Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man" considers the surprisingly complex evolution in representations of the white male body in late-nineteenth-century America, during years of rapid social transformation. John F. Kasson argues that three exemplars of physical prowess -- Eugen Sandow, an international vaudeville star and bodybuilder; Edgar Rice Burroughs's fictional hero Tarzan; and the great escape artist Harry Houdini -- represented both an ancient ideal of manhood and a modern commodity. They each extolled self-development, self-fulfillment, and escape from the confines of civilization while at the same time reasserting its values. This liberally illustrated, persuasively argued study analyzes the thematic links among these figures and places them in their rich historical and cultural context.
Download or read book Amusing the Million written by John F. Kasson and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2011-04-01 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Coney Island: the name still resonates with a sense of racy Brooklyn excitement, the echo of beach-front popular entertainment before World War I. Amusing the Million examines the historical context in which Coney Island made its reputation as an amusement park and shows how America's changing social and economic conditions formed the basis of a new mass culture. Exploring it afresh in this way, John Kasson shows Coney Island no longer as the object of nostalgia but as a harbinger of modernity--and the many photographs, lithographs, engravings, and other reproductions with which he amplifies his text support this lively thesis.
Download or read book Civilizing the Machine written by John F. Kasson and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 1999-05-17 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major theme in American history has been the desire to achieve a genuinely republican way of life that values liberty, order, and virtue. This work shows us how new technologies affected this drive for a republican civilization - a question as vital now as ever.
Download or read book Rudeness and Civility written by John F. Kasson and published by Hill and Wang. This book was released on 1991-09-01 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With keen insight and subtle humor, John F. Kasson explores the history and politics of etiquette from America's colonial times through the nineteenth century. He describes the transformation of our notion of "gentility," once considered a birthright to some, and the development of etiquette as a middle-class response to the new urban and industrial economy and to the excesses of democratic society.
Download or read book The Arts of Deception written by James W. Cook and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Arts of Deception, James Cook explores the distinctly modern mode of trickery designed to puzzle the eye and challenge the brain. Upsetting the normally strict boundaries of value, race, class, and truth, the spectacles offer a revealing look at the tastes, concerns, and prejudices of America's very first mass audiences.
Download or read book The Little Girl Who Fought the Great Depression Shirley Temple and 1930s America written by John F. Kasson and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2014-04-14 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "[An] elucidating cultural history of Hollywood’s most popular child star…a must-read." —Bill Desowitz, USA Today For four consecutive years she was the world’s box-office champion. With her image appearing in periodicals and advertisements roughly twenty times daily, she rivaled FDR and Edward VIII as the most photographed person in the world. Her portrait brightened the homes of countless admirers, among them J. Edgar Hoover, Andy Warhol, and Anne Frank. Distinguished cultural historian John F. Kasson shows how, amid the deprivation and despair of the Great Depression, Shirley Temple radiated optimism and plucky good cheer that lifted the spirits of millions and shaped their collective character for generations to come.
Download or read book Exploring Masculinities written by C. J. Pascoe and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring Masculinities: Identity, Inequality, Continuity, and Change is a comprehensive and contemporary reader for the growing field of men's and masculinities studies. It takes a conceptual approach by covering the wide range of scholarship being done on masculinities beyond the model of hegemonic masculinity. C.J. Pascoe and Tristan Bridges extend the boundaries of the field and provide a new framework for understanding masculinities studies. Rather than taking a topics-based approach to masculinity, Exploring Masculinities offers an innovative conceptual approach that enables students to study a given phenomenon from a variety of perspectives. It divides up the field in ways that provide accessible introductions to complex debates and key intra- and interdisciplinary distinctions. The book provides a portable set of conceptual tools on which scholars and students can rely to analyze masculinities in different contexts, time periods, and embodiments.
Download or read book Edgar Rice Burroughs Master of Adventure written by Richard A. Lupoff and published by Gateway. This book was released on 2015-08-27 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: So, just how was Tarzan created? Eager to know the inside story about the legendary John Carter and the amazing cities and peoples of Barsoom? Perhaps your taste is more suited to David Innes and the fantastic lost world at the Earth's core? Or maybe wrong-way Napier and the bizarre civilizations of cloud-enshrouded Venus are more to your liking? These pages contain all that you will ever want to know about the wondrous worlds and unforgettable characters penned by the master storyteller Edgar Rice Burroughs. Richard A. Lupoff, the respected critic and writer who helped spark a Burroughs revival in the 1960s, reveals fascinating details about the stories written by the creator of Tarzan. Featured here are outlines of all of Burroughs's major novels, with descriptions of how they were each written and their respective sources of inspiration.
Download or read book Strength and how to Obtain it written by Eugen Sandow and published by . This book was released on 1897 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Lives and Letters written by Robert Gottlieb and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2011-04-26 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The product of a lifetime immersed in the literary, performing arts, and entertainment worlds, Robert Gottlieb's Lives and Letters spotlights the work, careers, intimate lives, and lasting achievements of a vast array of celebrated writers and performers in film, theater, and dance, and some of the more curious iconic public figures of our times. From the world of literature, Charles Dickens, James Thurber, Judith Krantz, John Steinbeck, and Rudyard Kipling; the controversies surrounding Bruno Bettelheim and Elia Kazan; and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and her editor, Maxwell Perkins. From dance and theater, Isadora Duncan and Margot Fonteyn, Serge Diaghilev and George Balanchine, Sarah Bernhardt and Eleonora Duse. In Hollywood, Bing Crosby and Judy Garland, Douglas Fairbanks and Lillian Gish, Tallulah Bankhead and Katharine Hepburn, Mae West and Anna May Wong. In New York, Diana Vreeland, the Trumps, and Gottlieb's own take on the contretemps that followed his replacing William Shawn at The New Yorker. And so much more . . .
Download or read book A Companion to the Gilded Age and Progressive Era written by Christopher McKnight Nichols and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2022-06-15 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Companion to the Gilded Age and Progressive Era presents a collection of new historiographic essays covering the years between 1877 and 1920, a period which saw the U.S. emerge from the ashes of Reconstruction to become a world power. The single, definitive resource for the latest state of knowledge relating to the history and historiography of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era Features contributions by leading scholars in a wide range of relevant specialties Coverage of the period includes geographic, social, cultural, economic, political, diplomatic, ethnic, racial, gendered, religious, global, and ecological themes and approaches In today’s era, often referred to as a “second Gilded Age,” this book offers relevant historical analysis of the factors that helped create contemporary society Fills an important chronological gap in period-based American history collections
Download or read book Skate Life written by Emily Chivers Yochim and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2009-12-02 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Intellectually deft and lively to read, Skate Life is an important addition to the literature on youth cultures, contemporary masculinity, and the role of media in identity formation." ---Janice A. Radway, Northwestern University, author of Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature "With her elegant research design and sophisticated array of anthropological and media studies approaches, Emily Chivers Yochim has produced one of the best books about race, gender, and class that I have read in the last ten years. In a moment where celebratory studies of youth, youth subcultures, and their relationship to media abound, this book stands as a brilliantly argued analysis of the limitations of youth subcultures and their ambiguous relationship to mainstream commercial culture." ---Ellen Seiter, University of Southern California "Yochim has made a valuable contribution to media and cultural studies as well as youth and American studies by conducting this research and by coining the phrase 'corresponding cultures,' which conceptualizes the complex and dynamic processes skateboarders employ to negotiate their identities as part of both mainstream and counter-cultures." ---JoEllen Fisherkeller, New York University Skate Life examines how young male skateboarders use skate culture media in the production of their identities. Emily Chivers Yochim offers a comprehensive ethnographic analysis of an Ann Arbor, Michigan, skateboarding community, situating it within a larger historical examination of skateboarding's portrayal in mainstream media and a critique of mainstream, niche, and locally produced media texts (such as, for example, Jackass, Viva La Bam, and Dogtown and Z-Boys). The book uses these elements to argue that adolescent boys can both critique dominant norms of masculinity and maintain the power that white heterosexual masculinity offers. Additionally, Yochim uses these analyses to introduce the notion of "corresponding cultures," conceptualizing the ways in which media audiences both argue with and incorporate mediated images into their own ideas about identity. In a strong combination of anthropological and media studies approaches, Skate Life asks important questions of the literature on youth and provides new ways of assessing how young people create their identities. Emily Chivers Yochim is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Arts, Allegheny College. Cover design by Brian V. Smith
Download or read book Gladiator written by Philip Wylie and published by BoD - Books on Demand. This book was released on 2023-06-09 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gladiator, first published in 1930, tells the story of Hugo Danner, who is given superhuman speed, endurance, strength, and intelligence by his father as an experiment in creating a better human. We follow Hugo throughout his life viewed from his perspective, from childhood, when Hugo first discovers he’s different from others, to adulthood, as Hugo tries to find a positive outlet for his abilities around the time of the first World War. Gladiator has been made into a 1938 comedy movie, and is thought to be the inspiration for the Superman comic books—though this has not been confirmed.
Download or read book Sandow s System of Physical Training written by Eugen Sandow and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2016-12-09 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sandow's System Of Physical Training was Eugen Sandow's best and most expansive book, and it helped to establish him as the most famous and commercially successful circus strongman in the world. Sandow was also in a very real sense the first modern bodybuilder; and he gained fame in Edison's early movies and on the vaudeville stage. Sandow counted as his friends the Kings and Queens of Europe, presidents and much of artistic and intelligencia of the West; and in fact with his Physical Culture Schools, Books, Magazine, Exercise Systems and Devices (Sandow Grip dumbbells and Sandow Elastic Exerciser etc) he popularised and educated people everywhere about the benefits of the healthy lifestyle to be obtained through proper exercise and good food. Each RADLEY CLASSIC is a meticulously restored, luxurious and faithful reproduction of a classic book; produced with elegant text layout, clarity of presentation, and stylistic features that make reading a true pleasure. Special attention is given to legible fonts and adequate letter sizing, correct line length for readability, generous margins and triple lead (lavish line separation); plus we do not allow any mistakes/changes/ additions to creep into the author's words. Visit RADLEY BOOKS at www.radleybooks.com to see more classic book titles in this series.
Download or read book Ching Ling Foo America s First Chinese Superstar written by Samuel D. Porteous and published by Hybrid Global Publishing. This book was released on 2021-05-21 with total page 983 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the eve of the 20th century, Chinese magician Ching Ling Foo, one of the greatest illusionists ever seen on American soil, along with his talented family of musicians and acrobats overcomes deportation attempts, homeland tragedy, crooked managers and a diabolically clever American copycat to make an indelible impact on American culture becoming one of the highest paid and most popular acts in the United States twice. First, between 1898 and 1900 then once more between 1912 and 1915. Foo's story is indeed a magical one but, it is also so much more. With its focus on the interplay between Chinese and Western culture, celebrity, intercultural teen singing sensations, geopolitics, international intrigue, nativism, and disruptive technology, careful readers will discover "Foo" may hold many lessons for our own increasingly unruly era.
